


Shoulder

by doublejoint



Category: One Piece
Genre: Established Relationship, Other, Post-Punk Hazard Arc, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28942380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Sometimes surviving is enough.
Relationships: Hina/Smoker/Tashigi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Shoulder

**Author's Note:**

> mentions of canonical injury/death

Hina arrives at the base alone in the middle of the night, and Tashigi is notified by a ring on the dendenmushi, startling her where her head is nodding and the words on the form have all blurred and she’s forgotten what it is, thinking about...seaweed, was it? She can’t even remember that, but the dendenmushi is still ringing, so she lifts the receiver.

“Captain? This is the night watch. Rear Admiral Hina has arrived...but there’s no note of her arrival, so we were just wondering…”

Had she forgotten to mention it? She must have let it fall off the end of the long laundry list of things that must be done, even though she’d called Hina before doing practically anything else. And all that annoyance and disappointment in herself is momentary, pushed aside by the realization that Hina is here, now, earlier than expected and perhaps for longer—

“Yes, please send her to my quarters. I’d meant to let you know.”

“Ah, that’s alright then, Captain.”

Tashigi pushes up her glasses as they slip down her nose, placing the receiver down and absently stroking the dendenmushi’s back. It looks sleepy, too; she’s been using it much more lately, though not during the day. Tashigi yawns, covering her face; she knows she looks terrible right now, that she should look better for Hina than a rumpled shirt and tired eyes, her hair half-undone and tangled, but it can’t be helped, can it?

The door opens, and Hina is there, illuminated by the dim hallway lights, and Tashigi’s chest feels as if something’s been untied, a ribbon loose in the wind, and she wants to sob into Hina’s chest. Hina reaches her just as she’s stood up and engulfs her in an embrace, the firmness of her shoulder, the stiff fabric of her coat, the scent of her perfume and cigarettes mingled in a way that Tashigi can never tell which belongs to which. Hina’s hands are tight around her waist, and she’s smushing Tashigi’s glasses askew again, and Tashigi doesn’t give a damn about that. She yawns again, muffled by Hina’s coat, and Hina leaves a kiss on her forehead, her mouth dry. 

“I’m sorry I forgot to tell them you were arriving,” Tashigi murmurs, but Hina waves it off with her hand.

“Please. Look at you. Hina doesn’t mind.” 

She cups Tashigi’s face in her hand, as if searching it for something, but seems satisfied a few moments later.

“Hina won’t ask how you are, because you’re just going to say you’re fine, but--given the circumstances, you are, yes?”

Tashigi’s eyes drift involuntarily to the desk, the unfinished piles of intelligence to go through, every bit of information they had on Vergo, and all the forms she still has to finish, but then she looks back at Hina. She is fine; her performance is not, even perhaps given the circumstances—

Hina sighs. “They haven’t assigned anyone to help you?”

Those among her men who she’d trust are all still out of commission, the ones who’d survived Caesar’s gas on Punk Hazard, that is, and thinking of that all over again really does make her sob. 

She’s an officer. This is part of her burden, all that comes with the title and rank and salary and responsibility. It’s still her fault; she still could have done more; she still needs to be stronger. 

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” says Hina.

Tashigi nods, her face pressed into Hina's chest. Saying that doesn’t change anything, really, but the acknowledgement, the absolute knowledge that Hina understands, makes it feel the slightest bit more bearable.

* * *

They wake with the rest of the base, what feels like just as Tashigi’s shut her eyes again, and she stumbles around pulling on her clothes, wishing she had a cup of coffee within reach already, nearly tripping over a book before Hina catches her. She would have taken another bruise on the elbow against the table, she thinks, buttoning her shirt the rest of the way and adjusting her glasses, though they’re already straight on her nose. 

Hina is undoing her hair from its braid and combing through it with bare fingers, deft but yanking through the tangles as if they’re bothersome subordinates. Tashigi’s seen her do it enough times before, and yet--it feels so normal, in the middle of all of this, that when Tashigi realizes it the weight of all the morning’s responsibilities crash down on her head. It would be so easy to go on imagining that she’s only got her normal routine, that Smoker is just beyond the door in the bathroom or called out by someone else at the base. She will not let herself.

“There’s no smoking in the infirmary,” Tashigi says as they set off down the hall, and Hina looks as if she’s going to light one up anyway, even though she can’t smoke the whole thing by the time they get there.

Tashigi grabs Hina’s hand and squeezes it. She’s still without her gloves, her fingers soft and cold. 

“Hina won’t—” Hina breaks off, as if not sure what she’s going to say.

Tashigi waits. Hina squeezes her hand in return and sets her face squarely. It’s not as if Tashigi can’t see through it--not as if Smoker won’t be able to, either. But he’d appreciate her trying, all the same.

* * *

Tashigi had left the two of them alone all morning; she has too much to do and she’d never be able to get herself to leave. They’d never make her. There are exercises to oversee and unfinished requisition forms, injury reports and medical expenses to file, and there is every spare second she can wring out to continue composing letters to the parents of these children who are still with Vegapunk, to make call after call with the local Marine stations to find any information that Vergo hadn’t confiscated or destroyed, to ask them to put out any leads. 

Lunch comes both too quickly and not quickly enough, after Tashigi’s barely made any dent in her to-do list, but it feels as if it’s been longer; the dendenmushi in the office looks even more tired than the one in her quarters.

Still, being able to see both Smoker and Hina for lunch makes her feel a bit more energetic, like her last cup of coffee, the bottom thick with burnt grounds, had been brewed to triple strength. She gathers sandwiches for all of them and a fresh mug of coffee in the cafeteria, and makes her way to the infirmary trying not to think too much about what’s left to do.

She pauses when she reaches the infirmary’s open doorway. Hina is sitting on the edge of the bed, her hair obscuring both her and Smoker’s faces, but Smoker’s fingers are knotted in Hina’s hair, and without seeing it necessarily Tashigi knows the outline of his thumb on Hina’s cheek, having seen it from beside them--his other hand likely mirrors that one. There’s no smoke trailing from his hands; they’re just solid, there. 

Tashigi fumbles the sandwiches, nearly spilling her coffee in the process, and the clatter of the mug against the tray and the noise involuntarily escaping her throat breaks the moment into pieces that Tashigi would exchange the mug for, not that she could. She recovers, watching the coffee as she walks slowly over. Hina’s eyes are red, and she bites into her sandwich fiercely. Smoker sits up on his own the whole time he’s eating, not propped up by the pillows; it’s not something he’s just doing for Hina’s benefit, either; he’s not noticeably straining, and Tashigi breathes easier. His free hand is now trailing off into smoke, wrapping around both her wrist and Hina’s, and if he’s well enough to do that, too, then maybe he really will be discharged sooner than the medical staff are saying. 

“See, Tashigi? I’m doing better. They should let me smoke.”

“Once they let you onto the veranda, you can smoke there,” says Tashigi. 

“I smoked in the ship’s infirmary—”

“That was different,” says Tashigi. “Please, just bear with it a bit more.”

“Hina—”

“The medical staff yelled at Hina when Hina tried to let you before,” says Hina.

Smoker frowns, but lets it pass, and Tashigi, now finished with her sandwich, curls her fingers around the wisps of smoke.

* * *

Hina has to leave in the morning; it’s too close to the Reverie for her to stay too long, but even if it’s just a day and change, from Tashigi’s very limited perspective it’s been better than waiting for some time in the future. When she says as much to Hina, Hina nods.

“Hina agrees. It’s been too long, even if the two of you were fine.”

“But I am fine,” Tashigi protests.

“Hina saw your shoulder when you were getting dressed this morning.”

Tashigi frowns, her fingers lifting as if to touch the scar under her shirt. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

It’s a lie, but only a little one; Hina sees it for what it is, too perceptive, and Tashigi raises her glasses to rub at her eyes.

“I...I couldn’t win against an important opponent. Someone else had to do it for me, but…”

She can’t even say that she can’t compare to his skill level, can’t hope to despite the rigors of her training, despite everything she tries for. The sourness she feels curdles inside of her; must she be looking at his ever-advancing back? She’s never thought of being acknowledged by him, but that he won’t, really, sticks like the point of a sword pressed to her back, in the painful ache of that wound in her shoulder. It’s too cold.

Hina lights another cigarette. “You survived, though.”

Yes, she had, and so many hadn’t; she knows that all too well.

“Tashigi--sometimes that’s enough.”

Hina’s kiss is warm, decisive; if Tashigi hadn’t wanted to believe her already it would convince her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
